


i dream about it (and i wake up falling)

by queenofmarigolds



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: ...thing? idk, Arby's, F/F, Fantasy, Sort Of, and kara is a shapeshifting, it's not deep though it's all dumb humor, its explained, lena remembers dreams, she's a person though it isnt weird, veils? hypothetical ones?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:09:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27144304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofmarigolds/pseuds/queenofmarigolds
Summary: lena luthor, veil brusher. kara, traveling angel.(or, kara is some kind of fantastical shapeshifting spirit creature, lena is a skeptical woman who remembers her dreams, and they fall in love in a bizarre sequence of events.) don’t be fooled it’s not deep it’s dumb humor.(title from me & my dog by boygenius)
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 13
Kudos: 118





	i dream about it (and i wake up falling)

**Author's Note:**

> i saw a tumblr post talking about Death and the maiden as like a love story. and then i was thinking about supercorp. and then i TOTALLY shifted gears and turned kara into a bizarre thing. but she's adorable and we love her and we includes lena, who kara loves very much.
> 
> (oh also there's a lot of ages mentioned but events that happen in canon are also mentoined and don't necessarily coincide with the right age of the characters because I Don't Really Care.)
> 
> anyway supercorp endgame hope you enjoy

Lena Luthor first meets the enigma that is Kara when she is seventeen.

“You don’t look the way they say you do,” is all she says, really all she is thinking when she wakes in the middle of the night to see a figure standing by her bed. 

“Well,” the figure says, and its voice is surprisingly clear, surprisingly not the hoarse, scratchy sound Lena had braced herself for, “what did you think I’d look like, Lena?”

“Dark cloak and scythe, maybe. I suppose I never thought I’d be seeing you.”

The figure laughs, tips its head back and leans against her wall in an almost cocky manner. “You are a human. All humans see me soon enough.”

Lena shrugs, and the figure rises from its lean. There is a glint in the darkness.

“What should I call you, anyway?”

“Well, I am Death today. But I have a lot of names. I’m a spirit too, if you prefer to think of me that way. I am a lot of things. An angel. A woman. A corpse. A rebirth.”

“Death is a woman?”

“This Death is, yes.”

Lena is not going to admit that she doesn’t understand, but she’s sure the spirit knows this as she drapes herself over Lena’s white comforter in a manner most unlike… well, _Death_ herself.

“And you know, it’s quite annoying, because I anticipate what you’re going to say to me.”

Lena raises an eyebrow. “Oh? And what’s that?”

“You’re going to say no. Which I suppose is your prerogative. But it’s just a shame for me, because I have to go back soon enough and tell them you wouldn’t come. Which is a bit inconvenient.”

“Well, you’re right. I won’t be going with you.”

Death sighs heavily. “Yes, I know. Oh, well. I’ll be back for you in a while.”

“Can you tell me when?”

“I think you know as well as I do that I cannot, no.”

Lena leans back in bed, sighs.

“Can I tell you a secret?” the figure asks.

“I suppose.”

“I’m new to this. As far as the whole angel thing goes, I’m one of the younger ones.”

“How old _are_ you?”

“Oh, really quite young. If I was human, I’d say maybe eighteen. Maybe.”

“So I was supposed to die and they sent me a baby angel who can’t even make me agree to die?”

“Well, _that_ is quite rude, Lena.”

“What’s your name? Or do you have one?”

“Where I’m from, they call me Kara.”

Lena raises an eyebrow. “I think Kara means pure.”

The figure smirks at her. “I understand irony, darling. Until next time.”

And then the figure is gone, as though it was never there, and it’s dark enough in her room that Lena isn’t convinced she was. She wakes the next morning with nothing but a faint gray shadow on her bedspread that doesn’t quite seem to come out in the wash.

\---

The next time Lena Luthor sees Kara Danvers, she is nineteen, and it is in a dream.

She is sleeping in a tiny college bed beside a roommate who snored, and she had tried that stupid sleep meditation app and when she sees Kara in the corner of her mind, she instantly places the blame there.

When she makes eye contact with Kara she sits up in bed, gasping, but looking up she realizes she is not in her room (not really). It’s more of a void, stars all around and a cloud under her legs and her bed miles below, the smallest of dots that could have been a star had it twinkled. She looks forward.

Kara is perched before her, but she’s in the light this time. And Lena really, really hates to say this about an actual angel, but she’s stunning. Like the sun, but also like some kind of fire. A scary sort of stunning, but gorgeous all the same. Her hair is blonde and it really tumbles, rolling down her back far off of the cloud she sits on deep into the void. Lena has an inane thought about Rapunzel, about climbing down Kara’s hair back into her own bed and forgetting this experience. 

She doesn’t.

“Am I supposed to die again?” Lena sighs. 

Kara looks mildly shocked for a flash of a second and then steadies herself, cocks her head. “What? No. Do I look like Death to you?”

Lena pauses, unsure of the correct response. “Well, I suppose so. Given the fact that you sort of introduced yourself as Death the last time we spoke.”

Kara laughs suddenly, brightly, and Lena’s heart beats a little quicker because Kara just exudes warmth and what is wrong with her? 

“Well, sure, last time I was Death. This time, I’m… well, I don’t know. I’m a Dream, I guess. A Dream-Giver, or whatever you want to call it.”

Lena must be looking incredulous, because Kara’s face softens. “I don’t really have a specific title. Like I said, I have many names. And I guess I just sort of do what needs doing, over there.”

“Over… where?” Lena asks, feeling foolish as she follows Kara’s waving gesture.

“Oh, Elsewhere. Beyond. Again, the name isn’t my job. That’s up to you. What do you believe in, Lena?”

It seems too dark to say nothing, too harsh to tell a spirit or an angel or whatever the hell Kara is this time that she doesn’t believe, but she supposes Kara already knows that.

“You know,” Kara says almost conspiratorially, “you don’t have to believe in someone else’s something. It can be your own. I haven’t done this long, but I’ve seen almost every religion in the books, I’ve heard every name I could be given. It’s up to you. What do you think I am, Lena?”

“I think you’re Kara. Is that okay?” she asks, suddenly tentative, “Is it okay if I call you Kara?”

“Pure,” Kara smirks over at her, “it can also mean Beloved, I’ve learned. Less ironic.”

“So if you’re not here to let me die, why _are_ you here, Kara?”

Kara purses her lips, blows some air out, flops backward onto her cloud. It’s such a human gesture once again that Lena is struck by it.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m checking up on you. We come every so often, you know, the spirits. It is funny, though, that you remember me. Usually people don’t remember us.”

“They don’t?”

“No, not really. There’s always the odd one out, I suppose, the ones who chronicle Death or or live with ghosts. But most people don’t remember us, no. We check in, we leave them behind, they wake up and they’ve forgotten us.”

“You stained my bed last time.”

Kara grimaces. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I was still getting used to the whole evaporation thing. It’s not easy, I’ll tell you that.”

“Does everyone have such an immature spirit?”

Kara gasps, looking affronted, but she smiles widely. “Rude!” 

Lena giggles, so help her, and Kara looks pleased. 

“What would I be, then? Someone who doesn’t forget?”

Kara furrows her brow. “Well, there isn’t a real word. You’ve been called a lot of things throughout history. I’ve heard clairvoyant, but that isn’t quite right for you. Some people are just obsessed enough with spirits that they see us, but that’s almost violent.” Kara shudders, shakes her head. “That isn’t you. I’d say my favorite term? I heard someone say veil brusher, once.”

Lena doesn’t say anything, but she reclines back on the cloud and almost gasps. The stars above her seem to blink into constellations, paintings, Van Goghs and O’Keeffes and Kahlos. They are in color the way a paint-by-numbers set is, desperate starlight shining smudged between the empty spaces, filling in blood reds and soft greens.

She feels Kara’s beam on her. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Lena whispers, almost afraid to speak too loud. Kara puffs up proudly, as though she designed them (maybe she did, maybe she designed the void and maybe she hovered behind the great artists of the world, hand on their paintbrush, her very own Apollo shooting Paris’s arrow into the heel of Achilles.)

“Kara?”

“Yes?”

“What is a veil brusher, exactly?”

Kara pauses a moment, considers. Lena finds it comforting, the silence, which she rarely does, and it strikes her then. Strikes her that she’s met Kara all of twice and still feels deadly comfortable around her.

“Say there’s a veil. On one side, you have the humans, the animals, all of the world you live in. The other is the spirits, the Beyond, me. But humans can’t pass through the veil, you see, humans don’t see it. We spirits can melt through it and touch you and guide you in your directions. But you forget us.”

“Except me.”

“Except you,” Kara breathes, “Yes. Say none of the humans see this veil, you’re blind to it. Now say some of you- barely any, really, one in dozens of billions- some of you are walking around and running your hand over anything it can touch. And one day you run it over something soft, and you open your eyes, and it’s all clear as day. Veil brushers. That’s you.”

“Huh,” Lena remarks, for lack of a better word, and Kara nods, echoes her. “Yeah. Huh.”

They fall silent before Kara sits up abruptly. “Shoot. I can’t stay, I have to go haunt someone for a little while. Shoot.”

“What, you have a schedule?” Lena teases, because she can’t help herself, because Kara looks so flushed and rumpled as she brushes off her silky robes. 

“Yes, I do, and I’ve lost a lot of time here.”

“Why’s that?” Lena smirks, and Kara almost rolls her eyes. Almost.

“Before I go, is there anything you want to dream about in particular? Any happy memory you want to relive?”

Lena blushes, feels ridiculous, but she lowers her voice and answers. “My mother. My biological mother, I want to remember. I’ve forgotten too much.”

Kara doesn’t judge her, though, just smiles. “Just the good stuff, though.”

“Just the good stuff.”

“When you’re ready,” Kara says softly, “Just let yourself fall through the cloud. It’s easy enough. Just let it happen and you’ll be in your bed until morning. Good luck with that Spanish exam tomorrow, by the way. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with college.”

Lena scoffs at her, briefly wonders when she got so close with some sort of angel of the spiritual realm, and Kara starts to actually _float_ away when Lena catches her arm.

“Wait, when will I see you again?”

Kara smiles and it’s soft and Lena’s actually a little affected. Damn. “Oh, I don’t know. It could be a while. But just know one thing?” she lowers her voice dramatically, leans into Lena’s ear, her breath both hot and cold and gone all in one, “You’re my favorite of them.”

And then she is gone, and Lena lets herself look at the sunflowers being painted across her sky for a while before she falls through the cloud and finds herself back in her bed, back across from a snoring roommate.

She sleeps like the dead.

\---  
The thing is, Lena does see Kara several more times past then. For inklings of seconds, in corners of dreams, in faint outlines in mirrors. But never long enough, never enough for a real conversation. 

Lena finishes college, dates a few women, loves one, gets her heart broken when she is twenty four. And that is when Kara comes back. 

She isn’t asleep this time, she is very much awake. Very much in her brand new supervisor office at LuthorCorp, and very much stalking Andrea Rojas’s Instgram.

She hears a whistle from behind her. “Two hundred weeks ago? Lena, that’s a bit extreme.”

She whirls around and it’s Kara, standing behind her, looking almost human. Well, not quite. The strange suit she wears is glowing slightly, as if woven by pixie dust, her tie shiny like mother of pearl.

“Kara. What are you this time?”

Kara perches on her desk. “Hello to you too! And I think I’m a sort of angel on your shoulder. Your conscience, maybe. Well, angel on your financial reports.” she snickers, as though this is actually funny, and Lena looks at her in disbelief.

“I’ve been practicing wordplay,” Kara explains.

“I’d hardly call it that.”

“You can be _mean_ , Lena!”

“I know. That’s why I’m here.”

“Congrats on the view, by the way. It’s gorgeous.” Kara hovers over to the window that takes over Lena’s wall, gazes out at the city.

“So what are you here for? To tell me not to like Andrea’s three year old photos?”

“Closer to four. And sure. You deserve better than her anyway.”

“Like who?” Lena says glumly.

“Well, this spiritual being would be overjoyed to come close to deserving you. You’re a veil brusher! You’re special. And,” Kara lowers her voice, smirks, “really hot. So that’s a plus.”

There is a moment where Lena decides, fuck it. She will flirt with a twenty-something angel. This is her life.

“Well, maybe I am special, darling. And maybe I am hot.”

Kara pauses. “Oh, are you done? I thought there was going to be a but.”

“Should there be?”

“Absolutely not. But do you have anything to say to me?” This stupid… _being_ is making puppy dog eyes at her in her angel suit and Lena scoffs.

“You’re hot too, Kara.”

“Yes!” Kara pumps her fist like an actual child and Lena is sorry to say that she’s extremely endeared. 

“Are you a solid being?” She asks Kara.

“To you, yes. Why?” Kara raises her eyebrow and smirks, and Lena raises an eyebrow back before turning back to her paperwork.

She hears Kara mutter “unfair” under her breath and smiles, bites her lip. 

The door bursts open and an intern stumbles in. Lena freezes, looks at Kara, who shakes her head. “He can’t see me. Or hear me. Don’t worry.”

“Board meeting,” the man wheezes, “your brother wants you.”

Lena raises herself up from her chair, assumes her business posture, and stalks after the intern guiding her down the hallway.

Kara is floating beside her.

“Your business side is kind of hot, Lena.”

“You’re kind of annoying, Kara.”

“One for the money.” 

Lena turns to her, brow furrowed. “What?”

“English is a confusing language, Lena!” Kara whines, “Um… oh. Right on the money.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Hey, that’s an angel you’re talking to.”

The board meeting goes without consequence and back at her desk Lena gazes up to the floating woman who looks very eager to shake the snow globe at Lena’s desk. Lena deliberately ignores the plea in her eyes.

She’s attractive, and Lena really can’t dodge that fact. Damn her for her admiration of pretty women. Damn Kara for being an actual spirit and still tumbling into Lena’s life like she always hoped a girl would.

And then Kara cocks her head to the side and Lena knows what that means. “You have to go?” she asks.

Kara nods sadly. 

“I suppose asking when you’ll be back isn’t the most effective idea.”

Kara shakes her head, biting her lip. 

Lena nods. “Well, come back soon, Kara.”

“I promise I will.”

Kara is reaching out, then, and she touches Lena’s cheek with a thumb, grazing along her bone. Her eyes are warm, wide, and Lena is no artist but knows that if she was, this painting here, of Kara with her hand out that way and her shoulders tailored and glittering and her hair tumbling the way it did and her shimmering edges… this image would win her all the awards, all the acclaim.

Kara pulls back slightly, about to leave, and Lena pulls her in to kiss her on the cheek, a little close to her mouth, and Kara blushes before beaming before dissolving, and Lena goes home that night to sketch a portrait of the enigma that was Kara into her mind. 

\---

Kara did keep her promise. She did come back more often, and Lena spent nights with her now beneath stretches of false night sky and before mountains that shutter down the second Kara vanishes into the morning light.

When Lena is twenty seven, her brother dies.

It isn’t just the death that’s tragic but the circumstances, the breakdown and attack and fall of Lex Luthor. The real fall out of the sky.

Lex is _just_ in the ground when she gets an email about stepping up to CEO of LuthorCorp, about rebranding (how did LCorp sound to her?), and Lena has the urge to vomit. 

She finds herself at the toilet bowl, heaving, when something cold wraps her hair up for her. 

It is Kara, she knows this before anything actually happens. She breathes through her nose, out through her mouth, gathers herself, and turns around.

Kara is wearing black for the first time since she saw her as Death, and she’s translucent. Bluish gray, hovering as usual, but transparent.

Lena must look panicked because Kara takes her hand. She is solid. She is there.

“I’m a ghost, I think,” Kara says softly in answer to the unasked question. Lena nods once.

“I guess I thought ghosts were… you know. The people who actually died.”

“Sometimes, sure. Sometimes it’s me.” Kara says simply. “Do you maybe want to go somewhere more comfortable?”

In a flash Lena finds herself in the snow. It’s not cold, just around her, falling steadily onto her eyelashes. She is high up. It is windy.

“Where are we?” she asks Kara. The wind is howling but Kara is close to her (so close). 

“I don’t know. You’re the one who chose it.”

Lena furrows her brow. She feels Kara’s eyes on her and they’re patient, they’re kind, they’re sympathetic and Lena could just wrap her up and keep her forever.

“Lex always wanted to go here,” she says as the name of the mountain dawns on her. “He used to go on about temperatures up here, expeditions, various facts like that. He was obsessed. He used to say he’d bring me with him, when he came.”

“And did he?”

“He never came.”

There is silence as Kara tentatively wraps her arms around Lena, relaxing as Lena practically melts into her, tracing the blue gray skin below her fingers and watching Kara shiver.

“Are you cold?” Lena asks her.

“No,” Kara replies, and Lena can see her from the corner of her eye. 

“I missed you, Kara.”

Finally Kara beams at her, that trademark smile, and some of the black hole in Lena’s chest dissipates. “I missed you too, Lena. I’ve had to deal with some real boring people. I never lie when I say you’re my favorite human.”

“Take me with you,” Lena blurts, “bring me across the veil. I think I’d rather be there.”

Kara looks shocked. “Lena, you have a life! A company! People here, people who-,”

“No one here cares about me, not the way you- please, Kara. Just take me with you.”

Kara’s gaze turns sad. “Lena…”

Lena nods, feels a tear run down her cheek. It burns.

Kara looks panicked. “No, Lena, please don’t cry, I wish I could, but-,”

“I understand.”

There’s silence, then, and Kara goes rigid, as though she thinks Lena will try to leave. As though she’d even consider it, the ridiculous idea. Kara could be so _stupid_ sometimes. 

Kara’s lips are on hers in a second, and Lena feels a sigh leave her. Hands twist in hair and Kara leans in and the snow falls above their heads on the mountain with Lena half in Kara’s lap, their mouths moving together. 

When they pull away Kara looks at her, guilt lining her stunning features, and Lena only smiles. “I understand, Kara.”

“You mean so much to me, Lena.”

“I know.” (And for once she does, actually feels the care and the attention and the actual devotion Kara pours into her, allots her, lets her steal.)

“Do you want to tell me about him?”

Kara could know every fact about Lex Luthor in a nanosecond. Lena turns around. “I’d like that.”

And so she starts talking, up on the mountain, and Kara runs her hands through her hair. When Lena falls asleep Kara tucks her into bed and dissolves with a kiss on her forehead.

\---

When Lena is twenty nine she calls out for Kara and Kara comes. This seems somehow significant, but Lena isn’t entirely sure how. 

Kara comes and she’s dressed like a little ghost girl. She’s glowing still, yellow tones and gold shot through her veins, but she looks solid, thousands of times more human than their first meeting. 

Lena is in her bed and Kara climbs in, snuggles close to Lena, asks, “Ooh, what are we watching?” when she sees Lena fiddle with her remote, and sighs contentedly when Lena lets her hand drape over Kara’s hip. 

They stay silent for the duration of six episodes of television, rain landing softly outside and hitting Lena’s porch, Kara’s soft hums whenever Lena traces circles in her hair. 

It feels idyllic, feels domestic, feels like the answer to the “what is love” question she had to answer in purple sharpie for Valentine’s day in elementary school. It feels like the love she always strained toward, like the romances she made, like the times she helped her heart leap in Kara’s presence, training herself to start to care for a girl she knew she could love. 

And now she thinks she does, thinks she might love Kara, and with a lot of people that would send her bolting. With Kara it’s different. With Kara one of them lives in a land of machines and money and the other drifts lazily through a veil, courting her in her dreams. With Kara she doesn’t jump out of bed when she realizes, instead choosing to draw Kara to her in a hug. 

Kara grumbles. “Lena! I can’t see the screen, put me down! You humans are so ridiculous. And to think I said you were the best of them!”

“Mmm, you don’t mean that, I’m your favorite.” Lena smiles into Kara’s hair.

“Damn you, you are my favorite. Lena! I’m missing it all!”

And so Lena releases her, but not before Kara can peck her lips with a smile in her eyes.

They’ve been doing this. Not the Lena-calls-and-Kara-comes part, that is new, and Lena is still astonished that her little voice did anything. But Kara’s been visiting her often, once or twice a week, for them to drift in Lena’s void of paintings or float above volcanoes in a dreamscape Hawaii. And it’s different, now, because now they hold each other and kiss each other and still they don’t really talk about it, but it’s happened for years and it’s great but sometimes Lena is just so lonely.

“Sometimes I’m so lonely,” she says then, and Kara looks up at her, eyes wide.

“Did I-,”

Lena sees her mistake. “You have done nothing wrong, Kara. No, it’s just… I run a company. I’m successful, I’m important, I’m interesting.”

“You’re smart,” Kara supplies, “Gorgeous. Veil brusher of the millenium.”

Lena can’t help but smile at that. “But sometimes I just… I don’t know. Where is my family? My friends? I have you, and I’m so lucky, but…” she trails off, because she doesn’t know how to say it. Doesn’t want to voice her need for Kara closer, always, for more. 

Kara is all around her then, lips up her neck and hand grazing her chest and her stomach and her legs and Lena loves it, loves _her_ until…

Kara pulls back, pain evident on her face. “I can’t. Not yet.”

And Kara is drifting away slowly, glowing brighter, and Lena reaches for her quickly. “Kara, stay. Please.”

“I can’t. But almost, Lena. So soon. So, so soon, I promise you.”

She is gone as soon as she came in her shimmering body, gold in her veins, and Lena falls asleep with the TV running.

\---

The day after Lena’s thirtieth birthday she wakes up to something sizzling in the kitchen and a finger brushing hair out of her face.

When she opens her eyes Kara is there and more human than ever, solid and not glowing but dressed instead in an Arby’s XXL t-shirt and shorts with Batman on the butt. 

Lena is about to comment on the interesting fashion choice (what happened to pixie dust suits and actual death robes?) before Kara blurts, “I’m so sorry I’m late! A whole day, too, I’m such an idiot, because the final steps were just taking so long and I kept saying hurry up, it’s her birthday, and then when I landed here it was late and I had to find your apartment and the only clothes they gave me across the veil were these, we aren’t great with human fashion back home? And I’m really sorry, Lena, but I’m here now and I’m making breakfast and could we celebrate the big three oh again today?”

Lena blinks. “First of all,” she says sleepily, “I cannot believe you just said ‘the big three oh’. They need to brush up on their earth customs across the veil.”

Kara grins wickedly. “That was all me. I just wanted to see you smile.”

“Second,” Lena interrupts before she can get distracted, “what are you talking about? Late?”

Kara groans. “It was supposed to be your birthday present, but… I’m here. For good.”

Lena stares at her.

“There’s a precedent, you know. It took a while to figure out. But when something like me, some _one_ like me… when we fall in love. There’s an option. An option to become human, to be with the person you care about. And then when you die, you can travel together across the veil and live on the same side again. I know it sounds too good to be true, which is why I got processed for so long. And the hearings, yikes! They had to make sure it was mutual. I mean-,” Kara blushes, trails off, “not that you… well…”

Lena is gaping at her, and then she’s smiling and she knows she’s crying but who can blame her when this absolute idiot of a spirit crossed the veil for her?

“I love you, Kara,” she murmurs against her mouth.

“I love you too, so much, Lena, and I’m sorry it took so long, I was keeping it a surprise and then after Lex died I knew I might love you and then later I _knew_ I did but I just-,”

Lena kisses her, then, and they fall into bed until Kara announces that the bacon is definitely burning and Lena smirks at Kara’s ass covered with Batman and Robin and she is so in love, then. 

And maybe Lena Luthor, veil brusher, could get a life with Kara, traveling angel, and it would all be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i'm sorry for the premise and the fact that this concept is Not A Thing but i am NOT sorry for:  
> \- a cute ending  
> \- lena being the best character  
> \- kara and her outfits  
> \- especially batman on her ass  
> \- and arby's on her boobs
> 
> thanks for reading! 
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/queenofmarigxld)  
> [tumblr](https://blackseablacksky.tumblr.com/)


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